


re:collection, re:constellation

by aprilclash



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Growing Up, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Character Death, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7622908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprilclash/pseuds/aprilclash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“In the end we’re just soldiers. Me, you, your friend Jihoon, the cute kid who sings during breaks. We’re all being trained to kill people.”</p><p>“I’m not here to kill anyone. I’m just looking for the stars.”</p><p>“And I’m just chasing the sun.”</p><p>A space war AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	re:collection, re:constellation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nisakomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/gifts).



_The universe contains, among other things, black holes, vast clouds of gas and lights, endless void, a diamond planet, and your tiny body._

_— Night Vale podcast_

 

Junhui remembers the past in dazzling, shimmering colors suspended in a black sea, like a constellation of memories, like the glow-in-the-dark stickers Wonwoo used to plaster on the walls of their tiny shared room.

Some moments are brighter than others. They’re the turning points, the moments he made history and history made him. Junhui sees them in blue and white, yellow and red, giant and hypergiant and dwarf, young or dying stars. They’re stars, vivid and brilliant, clean and sharp in Junhui’s memory.

They float in a nebula of other memories, hazy and confused, and soft like water-colored galaxies, pinks and reds blending into blues, greens turning to purples and everything fading to black at the edge of the universe. It’s a cluster of feelings, of sensations, of voices and smells and colors of the past that elude any of Junhui’s attempts to give them a time and place.

Junhui doesn’t like to reminisce about feelings. He likes to remember events, to remember moments and choices that shaped him as a person, but not feelings. The only rightful place for feelings is the present, not the past.

But sometimes, when he feels lonely and the universe is silent and cold and the sun is so far away, he rescues drowned memories from that colorful nebula, shipwrecked moments without a clear position in the time frame of his life, and he savors them slowly, like a kid stealing candies from the forbidden jar. His mother’s voice echoing in the sink as she sang pop music popular in the Andromeda system, his father’s proud reflection in the mirror as he smoothed a wrinkle on the front of his uniform, the jingle of Yangyang’s favorite video games. And then, later on, Soonyoung’s laughter, Mingyu and Minghao’s bickering, Jihoon’s guitar playing softly from the last room of the corridor. Wonwoo’s secret smile, the one he saved for Junhui and Junhui only.

Junhui opens his eyes and stares at the little flashing light on the console. Yellow, yellow, yellow, he counts the beats until it turns red and only then he allows himself a smile. A synthetic, melodious female voice announces that the level of oxygen is now less than fifteen percent and that a strategic retreat towards the mother ship is strongly advised.

“Yes, sure, give me a new engine and it’s the first thing I’ll do, Qian _jiějiě_.”

The AI interface that Soonyoung and Seokmin reprogrammed to sound like a famous pop idol from the Nyambi system beeps, confused.

“The engines have suffered from a critical damage.”

Junhui blinks, unfazed. His starfighter bumps lightly against the fragment of an asteroid and he hears the light thud of his copilot’s head against the walls of the cockpit. Poor Lee Chan, smiley, stubborn Lee Chan, smelling of Academy and hopeful dreams, who volunteered to be part of a suicide mission. The boy is still breathing. He hit his head, hard, when an enemy MST-X scout crashed against Junhui’s MS-17’s left engine during the solar flare. He’s been unconscious since then, but judging from how quickly the oxygen level is dropping, he won’t be alive for long. Neither of them will.

Dying like this, surrounded by the most beautiful view in the universe, is not so bad, though someone like Wonwoo would probably appreciate it more.

Junhui’s hand goes to his chest and finds the dog tag at his neck. He holds it like an amulet, feels the numbers and letters under his fingers and repeats them in his head. He doesn’t need to look. He already knows them by heart. They’re his secret password for everything, from the subscription to Song Qian’s official fanclub to his bank account code, but they’re not his numbers. They’re Wonwoo’s.

What will they say to him? Will they tell him Junhui died in battle? Or will they tell him he was right? Wonwoo had predicted the stellar storm, he had asked Fleet Admiral Jung and Admiral Jeon, his own father, to postpone the attack. He had asked Junhui to stay at the base this time.

“Did you know, Wonwoo? I chased the sun for so long. And I caught it, right in my face. I don’t think I’ll survive this time.”

The red light keeps flashing, like one of Song Qian’s pop songs. Junhui murmurs the lyrics to himself. _It’s turned on, red light, the vivid, red light, it gets bigger by itself. That red light._

He promised Wonwoo he’d come back, but what’s a promise made by a man to a man in front of the vastness of the universe? In front of its magnitude, in front of its brilliance? Nothing. The universe doesn’t listen. It’s dead and cold. _Did you know? The universe is alive,_ says Wonwoo’s voice in Junhui’s memories.

He closes his eyes. He’s so tired. He wants to give up. But Wen Junhui is not a man who gives up. He’s made himself into the kind of man who never gives up.

“Qian?” he calls, hanging onto the last hope. “Is our communication system still working?”

“No, Captain. It’s irreparably damaged.”

“Of course it is. Tell me something I don’t know. Is there something that has not been critically damaged?”

He waits, because he has all the time in the universe, until the AI completes the analysis.

“The iota waves amplifier has not suffered from any major damage.”

Iota waves? Who looks for iota waves anyway? Sending a iota waves SOS is like putting the message in a bottle and leave it to float adrift. It’s like believing in miracles, in last minute happy endings, in heroes and angels. This is not the end of Wen Junhui’s flight, this is not his destiny. Junhui bites his lips and takes a long, deep breath, hoping it won’t be one of his last.

“Send an SOS message.”

If there’s a chance, Wonwoo will see it. Wonwoo will find him.

Now he can only wait, and remember.

~

**i. yellow dwarf**

_For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse._

_So collapse.  
Crumble.  
This is not your destruction._

_This is your birth._

_— nikka ursula (n.t.)_

When Wen Junhui is twelve years old his mother trims his hair for the last time. She runs her fingers through dark locks and tells him stories, words spilling from her lips like the long strands falling on the floor.

They are stories of gods and tricksters, of turtles, of dragons and giants. They’re stories from another world, stories the mother of Junhui’s mother brought with her when she left Home, together with her language, her surname and her big eyes. Junhui’s mother never learned the language of her mother. She grew up at the edge of society, in the outer levels of space stations, traveling from system to system on the first available airship until her family finally found a place to stay. She spoke a language that was a mixture of any and every language. When she married a pilot of the Expansion Star Division, another immigrant whose only Chinese legacy was his surname, there was little or nothing left of that heritage in her. She remembers the stories, though. She tells Junhui about the Moon Goddess, about the Dragon King and the Eight Immortals because she doesn’t have anything else to give him.

Today’s story is about a giant named Kua Fu, who tried to chase the sun and died from exhaustion before he could catch it. Kua Fu was big and scary but he was also kind. The story said he was vain, for he thought himself faster than the sun, but Junhui thinks he was only naive. There’s supposed to be some kind of bottom line in this story, a warning not to go after things bigger than you maybe, but Junhui is too fascinated by the idea of winning over the sun to think about it. He wants to grow tall. He wants to stand tall over the world. Someday he’ll chase the sun and he’ll catch it, because he’s not Kua Fu. He’s Wen Junhui and he always wins over the other kids of the District and the sun will be no match for him.

He tells his mom and she laughs and pats his shoulder, gives his hair a little ruffle and tells him he’s free to go.

“Your friends are waiting,” she says. Mingming already called three times to ask if Junhui was ready to come down and declare war on the kids of the Thirteenth District. Junhui gets up and stands on his toes to land a kiss on his mother’s cheek, but something shiny catches his attention.

Junhui’s eyes travel past the window, past the bio-barrier that keeps the atmosphere tied to the space station, past the ring of asteroids gravitating around SZ-2. Riguang breathes in the distance, a desolate blue giant. It’s uninhabitable but its resources will fuel SZ-2 for at least another century. Junhui’s eyes travel over the surface of the planet and focus on the twinkling little star behind it. It’s a tiny light that flickers, shakes... and falls.

“Mom, look! A shooting star!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, dear. We can’t see shooting stars from here.”

That’s what she says, but the star keeps falling and falling, sucked in by the planet’s center of gravity, and as it falls it grows brighter. Junhui’s mother grabs his wrist, her nails digging into Junhui’s skin, and he’d cry out but the way her face is twisted in terror freezes him too. Now the little star is big, burning white and golden like a sun, and Junhui wants to catch it for his mom so she’ll stop being scared. But the sun is big, so big that not even the giant Kua Fu could catch it, and Junhui is only twelve when the first missile lands on SZ-2 and the war begins.

~

**ii. white giant**

_Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.  
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home,  
and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but  
nothing is infinite,  
not even loss.  
You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day  
you are going to find yourself again._

_— Finn Butler_

When Junhui is tired - tired of waiting, tired of counting the stars glued to the ceiling, tired of seeing his mother cry in the middle of the night and Yangyang playing video games at the highest volume possible not to hear her - he hacks into the system of the hive and climbs up to the roof. He sits on the railings, legs dangling dangerously over the two hundred meters of public dormitories separating him from the ground, and he counts the real stars.

The sky is different on HK-7. There are only a few hundred light years between Riguang (and the wreck of SZ-2) and Junhui’s new house, but it’s like a whole different universe. (It _is_ a whole different galaxy, but the universe is the same, blinking from above, cold and silent and unwavering.)

When Junhui exhales, his breath fades in angry puffs against the mosaic of nebulae and galaxies, colorful paintings on the otherwise black sky. There’s no sun for Junhui to chase on HK-7. There is a star at the center of this system, Apollo, a white giant named after a god of the arts, but Junhui has never seen it. The revolution of HK-7 around its planet was calculated in a way that leaves the station always hidden behind it, untouched by Apollo’s light.

Junhui inhales the universe and breathes it out, feels the stars thrum under his skin when his heart beats. Under him, the station pulses at the rhythm of its colossal engine. Junhui has no interest in space stations, in cramped little hives inhabited by cramped little people running back and forth like bees in a futile attempt to survive. Junhui has no interest in a life that will turn him into a little bee. People look at him and they can only see his long, unruly hair, his dirty knees, the tight line of his mouth and the dark wall in his eyes. They will call him a rebel, they will call him a waste, maybe they will call him a criminal in a few years, but Junhui doesn’t listen. He looks at the sky, so full of life, so full of light, so empty. He looks at the sky and he wishes he could be up there to catch the sun.

Junhui wanted to be a giant, but now he knows it’s useless. No matter how tall you grow, no matter how tall you stand, you can’t chase anything if your feet are still glued to the ground. Junhui wants to fly, more than anything else, he wants to fly like his father before him and better than him. (Junhui’s father died in the sky, Junhui won’t. He’ll catch the sun someday.)

Junhui wears his long hair, his piercings, his father’s too big jacket like a uniform. They’re his armor during the night, on empty roofs and under bright stars, and during the day, on packed classrooms and under white ceilings. Despite his appearance, despite the suspicious glares of the teachers, despite the watchful glances of his classmates, Junhui is a good student. He’s never missed a class. Good grades are his only occasion to leave HK-7 and join one of the military academies of this galaxy, after all.

His tracker rings and a little jolt on the right side of his brain signals the incoming call.

“What is it, mom?”

“You should get down,” she says. She sounds sad, sadder than usual. Hopeful and sad at the same time. “There’s a man here who would like to talk to you.”

~

Junhui’s mother doesn’t cut his hair again after the beginning of the war, but Junhui gets a haircut anyway. They scrub him raw, they cut his hair, take his piercings and his father’s jacket and hand him new clothes, pale blue and grey.

“It’s your uniform,” they say. _This is the new you. You’re this uniform from now on,_ is what they don’t say, but Junhui hears it anyway.

The cotton is raw and scratchy against his skin, but his throat is scratchier, burdened with all the words he never got to say to his mother before he left. He talked to his brother, told him to be a good boy, to study, to stay away from the black market - “Like you did, _ge_?” he answered, the little brat - but he couldn’t find anything to say to her and she couldn’t find anything to say to him. Their goodbyes were said in another language, a language made of sighs and bitten lips and long, languid gazes.

Junhui knows she sees his father in him, in the kind eyes he tried to hide under his long bangs, in the stars reflecting in his irises every time he looks up at the sky wishing he was up there, flying.

“Do you hate it?” asked Junhui once, a few week after his father’s last mission, the one he never came back from. “The sky took him away.”

“The war took him away,” she had said, shaking his head. “The sky brought him to me.”

He wonders if his mother still loves the sky, even now that it’s taking away her first son. Junhui is leaving to fight a war, but it’s not the war that’s taking him away. He wonders if the sky will ever bring him back to her.

Captain Jeon visits Junhui before he leaves for the facility, after the examinations and the endless series of questions and the sixth white room, not different from any of the previous five, where Junhui is told to sit and wait.

He looks bigger in his uniform, so different from the man who sat next to Junhui’s mother in their small living room two months ago. He was a friend of Junhui’s father, he said, his _best friend_ , and he had come to visit his widow, reminisce old times for a few hours and casually offer empty words of comfort and a spot for Junhui in the most prestigious military academy of the this side of the universe.

“Your father would’ve wanted you to join,” he had said, and Junhui’s mother had looked both heartbroken and hopeful. “Money won’t be a problem. He was like a brother to me.”

Junhui knows why his mother has agreed to this, although it pains her to be separated from her elder son. “We think the academy will help you,” she said, and she was thinking about her son hanging out with the wrong friends and spending stolen time on desolate roofs, her son who has no friends and always looks at the sky with a painful longing.

Captain Jeon dismisses the soldier at the door and he turns towards Junhui, taking a good look at him.

“You look like your father,” he says, and Junhui can’t say he wasn’t expecting it. If Junhui’s father hadn’t died, he would’ve been here probably. Captain Wen, standing next to Captain Jeon and telling Junhui to behave and write home often, joking about his new haircut maybe. But his father is not here. His father is scattered everywhere across the universe after a red matter beam turned his starfighter, he and his copilot into stardust while this man, who was flying next to them, miraculously survived. Junhui’s father is stardust and memories.

Junhui learned to keep the bitterness away but he never learned how to make it disappear forever. It comes back to bite him sometimes, like now. He just wants to be mean, to take any revolting feeling of pity he might inspire and throw it back at this old man who thinks he can adopt the son of his best friend to erase his own guilt. As if that could fill the hole in their family. As if that could fix the hole in Junhui, keep his anger from leaking from his chest every fucking moment of his life.  
He looks up, belligerent and angry, and Captain Jeon is staring at him but he’s not really seeing Junhui. He’s looking at his father, and Junhui feels like he’s intruding, like he’s standing between a man and his memories - between a man and his best friend.

He doesn’t say anything in the end. Everyone has a hollow spot in their chest and it’s not his place to decide what is the better way to fill it. For Captain Jeon, it might be helping his best friend’s son. Junhui has no answer for himself.

The moment blossoms, withers and dies and the uniform takes over the man easily, in a heartbeat.

“I hope you realize, Wen Junhui, that your admission has been a special favor.”

“I do, sir.”

“Your father was a hero but his reputation will not protect you for long inside the walls of the Academy. Nor will I. Do not mess up.”

The sun is still so far away and Junhui is still small, but a chance is a chance. He lowers his head, thanks Captain Jeon and walks to the shuttle that will take him to the Federal Academy.

~

**iii. yellow dwarf**

_They say the Universe began  
With just one atom  
Or at least something very small  
Full of fizzing potential  
But all too easy to ignore._

_— Liv Torc_

Junhui lasts three months before his roommate, boring, proper, polite Jeon Wonwoo, punches him in the face. It’s not a good punch. It’s kinda weak and Wonwoo should work on his stance and maybe polish his footwork but it’s also true that this is probably the first time he has punched someone in his entire life. Junhui could’ve done much better, he could still do much better, but he won’t because a. Wonwoo doesn’t look like he can take a punch without breaking in tiny sharp pieces and b. Wonwoo is right and Junhui totally deserved that punch.

“I can’t do this,” he says, the left side of his face tingling with something that will solidify into dull pain, but for now is only loud white noise. “I can’t,” he repeats, and it’s more a sob than a whisper. 

The dam is breaking and Junhui feels like he’ll start crying for real very soon in front of his roommate to whom he has spoken three words in the last three months and who just punched him and looks like he’s going to freak out or hug him if he cries. Too late. 

“I’m not cut for this life,” he sobs, he shakes. He cries. “I’m not the kind of man who obeys orders. I’m not made to wear a uniform and believe in it, I can’t shut up and listen, I’m not made for this.”

Wonwoo freaks out for a moment but hugs him anyway. It’s awkward and wet and too hot. Junhui feels fire in his face, spreading down his neck and onto his chest. He can’t see Wonwoo’s face but his ears are redder than Junhui’s.

“You can do this,” he says. “You can make yourself into that kind of man if you want. You can make yourself into someone who never gives up. You can make yourself into anything you want.”  
Junhui sniffles and his nose is running and he must look like a mess of tears and snot, but Wonwoo hands him a tissue and pats his back awkwardly. Behind them, a red light signals the imminent departure of the last shuttle of the day bound to Keshmet, the biggest planet of the system. The terminal is almost empty, but Wonwoo still steps in front of Junhui to make sure no one can see him crying. (Or maybe to make sure he doesn’t slip away and leave in spite of Wonwoo’s efforts.)

“Why did you follow me?” Junhui asks, and every word rasps against his swollen throat.

“Because you looked ready to jump on the first shuttle available and go back to wherever your home is like a loser. You don’t look like a loser.”

“More like your father would have your head if you had let me run away, considering how many strings he pulled to make me your roommate.” He blocks Wonwoo on the verge of a powerful protest. “I know he did.” There’s an awkward pause. “I don’t want you to be my friend out of pity.”

Jeon Wonwoo, the son of Captain Jeon, the same Captain Jeon who convinced Junhui to be here, stares at him blankly, contemplating the mysteries of the universe in Junhui’s face.

“Why do you have to be so stubborn?” he asks.

“I’m not my father and you’re not your father and this thing won’t work for us just because it worked for them. I don’t need a best friend to keep up with some family tradition,” answers Junhui, and Wonwoo shakes his head, like he always does when his calculations turn out wrong and the universe laughs in his face. (Junhui might have not talked to him in three months, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t stared at him when he thought Wonwoo wasn’t staring back.)

“I don’t care about tradition,” Wonwoo says, and leans over, suddenly too close. He pries Junhui’s fist open and the most surprising thing is that Junhui lets him. He lets him uncurl all his fingers and take the small ID-com out of his hand. He lets him open the menu and the select ticket of the shuttle ship for Sekhmet. All his savings are in that ticket and he doesn’t lift a finger to stop Wonwoo when he hits _delete_.

“There you go, it’s gone! Now if you want to leave you have to wait until next month, when your mother will send you credits again. Which means I have three more weeks to give you reasons to stay.”

 _Why are you doing this?_ wants to ask Junhui. He can’t understand why someone like Wonwoo would care if someone like Junhui is here or not.

Instead, his lips move and he finds himself whispering, “That was mine. Asshole.”

Wonwoo beams. “That was what a good friend would’ve done.”

~

The name of the star of this system is Ra. It’s a medium yellow star, strikingly similar to the one Junhui had learned to call ‘sun’ on SZ-2, only visible from the BA-5T space station for four hours every day due to the obstruction of either its orbit around Hathor or Hathor’s orbit around Sekhmet or Sekhmet’s orbit around Ra. Four hours of golden, bright sunlight that the staff of BA-5T uses to grow the station’s vegetables and fruit. Four hours that Junhui usually spends in the cafeteria, in the observatory when it’s available or in the roof garden of the dorms, stretching under the sun like a big lizard.

Today Junhui can only enjoy the sun for forty minutes because he has two hours of flying simulation later, so when he strides into the cafeteria he blatantly ignores Wonwoo’s half-hearted complaints about photosensitivity and chooses to sit by the airy windows.

“You can sit somewhere else if you want,” he offers, firmly set on recharging like a pre-galactic solar battery. It apparently goes unheard, because Wonwoo is already flopping down next to him and spreading his study materials all over the table.

“I don’t get your obsession with that star, I really don’t. Do you know direct light is harmful for both your skin and eyes?”

“Yeah, direct light. There are at least three layers of bio-barrier between us and direct light, so shut up and let me enjoy the sun while I can.”

Wonwoo is quiet for a moment, but there’s that sparkle in his eyes he only gets when he’s found the right coordinates for his infrared telescope, when he’s about to prove the existence of a star no one else has ever found. It’s a quiet glimmer of victory that doesn’t reach his face, but stays confined to the bottom of his eyes.

“Yes, but what is the difference between a sun and a star? Aren’t they the same thing?”

Junhui doesn’t answer. He focuses on his food, loudly inhales the soup from his bowl and cleans his mouth with his forearm when he’s done. Lee Jihoon, who’s studying to become a specialist of chemical weapons, grimaces three seats away but Wonwoo doesn’t mind that Junhui is a messy eater. He only minds about Junhui not answering him, and the dab that hits him between his ribs is expected but not less painful just because Junhui knew it was coming.

“I’m eating,” he says. Wonwoo steals the last piece of meat from the bowl and Junhui snarls. ”I’ll order another bowl for you if you answer.”

Wonwoo would’ve never stricken Junhui as a stubborn person. He isn’t a stubborn person to be honest. He’s just... oddly persistent. Consistent. And not totally unbearable like Junhui thought he would be.

“I would’ve answered anyway if you had just let me finish my lunch.”

“No, you were stalling because you know I have a Geospatial Environmental Modeling test in twenty minutes and you were hoping I’d leave before you finished.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing some last minute cramming? You’re gonna fail the test as a punishment for bothering me.”

Wonwoo groans and leans against Junhui’s shoulder. “Why are you like this? You’re my roommate. You’re supposed to be on my side, and answer my questions every now and then maybe.”

Junhui pats his head.

“You can stay here and miss your last chance to squeeze numbers into your messy head or you can go, read the chapter you forgot to review last night and when you come back I will tell you what the difference between a star and a sun is.”

Wonwoo pouts. “You could tell me now.”

“You have no patience, really. Good things come to those who wait.”

During the three weeks after the fight (and the terrible punch and the torn ticket and the awkward crying noises Junhui had made and the stars breathing in Wonwoo’s eyes as he talked about friendship and trust and other ugly things Junhui can’t bring himself to acknowledge now) Wonwoo has worked hard to deconstruct every single one of Junhui’s preconceptions about him. He destroys to rebuild and when he’s not happy with what he’s getting he destroys again (and rebuilds again.) He’s methodical and quiet, and definitely better at this friendship thing that Junhui is, which means he is bound to win every single argument they have. (And they have many.) It makes Junhui mad, because the only way he has to win is to become better than Wonwoo at the friendship thing, which means they have to become _friends_. (Junhui thought he was adamant about his resolution of not befriending Jeon Wonwoo, but maybe Wonwoo destroyed that resolution too and now he is. They are. Friends.)

Lee Jihoon from Junhui’s Missile Ballistic class gets up to leave his tray and knocks on Wonwoo’s head. “You’re so whipped, I told you he was trouble.”

“Go away, Jihoon.”

“You should’ve just let him leave... Now you’re both so gross and friendly and it’s ruining my appetite.” He sighs. “See you in class, Wen.”

Wonwoo too gets up to leave. “Won’t you say good luck to me?”

“Do you really need luck to pass this?”

It’s definitely the right thing to say because Wonwoo leaves with a smile, leaving Junhui alone at the table to produce melanin and focus on the flight formations he’ll have to try in the simulator and feel the weight of his ID in the back pocket of his uniform, heavy with all the credits his mother sent him at the beginning of the month. There’s more than enough to buy another ticket for Sekhmet and a passage on a space ferry back to HK-7, a one-way trip towards mom and Yangyang, towards home. And yet something stops him. 

Three weeks was all it took for his resolve to go up in smoke. Junhui tells himself it’s because he can see the sun here on BAT-5, because it’s easy to follow your dream if you can see it right ahead. (What he doesn’t tell himself is Wonwoo’s name, because it’s always on the tip of his tongue anyway, or out loud between them.)

The thing with Wonwoo is... he asks the right questions. He looks for the right things. He usually finds them. Wonwoo is a cartographer, a map person. He’s a navigator. He’s an ass sometimes. He’s an expert at seeing things no one else sees. He’s an explorer. Wonwoo canvasses the dark quadrants of the map one by one until he finds a star, writes down its position in his messy, airy handwriting. Wonwoo makes his own routes and his skies are full of colors and wonders and sometimes Junhui feels just like one of his lost stars. Where everyone sees a black spot Wonwoo sees light, he sees hydrogen and helium burning bright enough to blind, he sees gravity bend the universe around a pulsing ball of nuclear heat.

“We’re systems,” he says, “each one of us. We attract other people, me and you and...”

“Are you calling me attractive?” jokes Junhui, because he’s not ready to be compared to a star, not yet maybe.

“I called myself attractive. Stop making everything about yourself. You know what a star becomes when it’s too greedy?”

“A black hole?” tries Junhui.

“Yes, a black hole. But don’t worry, I won’t let you collapse on yourself. We’re like binary stars ok? Because we’re roommates, you get it?”

Wonwoo is scary because he says shit like that easily, as though it’s just a passing thought, but with a deafening surety, like he really means it. Junhui slaps a hand on his mouth and yawns, drained after the last two hours inside the simulator, unable to deal with Wonwoo’s quizzical words now. “Why are you so loud?”

Wonwoo beams and sticks glow-in-the-dark stars from his side of the wall to Junhui’s, makes a map of the steps he had to walk from his bed to the one where Junhui is lying awkwardly on his back like a starfish.

“I did amazing on the test. Now tell me. The thing. About the sun and the star.”

~

So Junhui tells him. But not immediately. First Junhui must tell him about the flight simulator and the difference between an AY-17 and an AN-17 in terms of speed and firepower and how the first has an automatic ultra-speed control system but the second is invisible to most military radars of the Imperial Fleet. He teaches Wonwoo how to hack into the security system of their room and change the password if he forgets it and how to say _can you help me?_ in six different languages, including his own. He tells him about the six different space stations his family has visited after SZ-2’s fall, and how in the end they were all the same.

“This is the world we live in. Humanity is packed in metal cities orbiting around planets, the exact same model of space station scattered at every corner of the universe in the foolish hope to make a difference in a war against ourselves. Have you ever seen the enemy, Wonwoo?” He hasn’t, so Junhui tells him. He talks about brown eyes and dark hair and people just like them, just like Wonwoo and Junhui, pushing a button on a console and wiping out entire cities like it’s one of Yangyang’s games.

“Don’t you find it funny that we’ve explored most of the known universe and we’ve never met someone more dangerous than ourselves?”

“What do you mean?” asks Wonwoo, shifting on the bed until he’s on Junhui’s side.

“I mean, we’ve torn apart entire galaxies looking for someone else. We didn’t know what we were looking for, friends or enemies, but we didn’t find anything. We’re alone in this universe, alone and angry, so we started killing each other.” His uniform feels too tight around the neck, and for a moment Junhui can’t breathe. “We like to think of ourselves as normal students, we go to classes every day, we study to get good grades and we practice to do well on the simulation machine, but in the end we’re soldiers. Me, you, your friend Jihoon, the cute kid who sings during breaks. We’re all being trained to kill people.”

“I’m not here to kill anyone. I’m just looking for the stars.”

“And I’m just chasing the sun.”

Wonwoo doesn’t understand so Junhui tells him about the giant who wanted to catch the sun (it’s been so long he’s forgotten his name, but the imagery, oh, the imagery is so vivid in his mind it’s almost alive). Wonwoo still doesn’t understand and Junhui grows frustrated and restless because he doesn’t know how to put belonging in words in a way that a kid who’s always belonged can understand.

“What does any of this have to do with the difference between a sun and a star?”

“Nothing,” says Junhui. “Everything.”

Junhui knows the answer, inside his heart, but he doesn’t have the words. Like his mother, he talks in sighs and bitten lips and long, languid gazes and sometimes it’s not enough.

He waits until the lights are off and he can hear the rustle of Wonwoo’s blankets, feel the intensity of his confusion fill the entire room. Wonwoo likes answers as much as Junhui likes questions. He tries again.

“It’s like... the difference between a house and your home, you know? Both are houses, but only one is home. And among all the stars of the universe, there’s only one I can call sun. It’s the one that belongs to me.”

He can’t see him, but he knows Wonwoo is frowning. “Why are you here, Junhui? It’s because you like to fly? Because you have talent and nowhere else to be? What are you really chasing?”

Junhui doesn’t know. His home is gone, his family is gone, his sun is gone.

“I will tell you when I catch it.”

~

**iv. shooting star**

_I’m surprised the universe still offers me options,  
when it knows my inexhaustible choice is you._

_You sit, as still as snow, in the back of my mind  
through every decision I have to make._

_And all of the infinite versions of what could be  
is only as important   
as the chance of you being there with me._

_I look back to a world  
who is waiting for me to decide  
between a reality with you  
and a reality without._

_My god.  
How I laughed._

_— nikka ursula (n.t)_

Hangar 33 smells like engine and adrenaline, like new uniforms and rubber and fear. It sounds like engine and adrenaline, like awkward chatter noise and deep breaths and echoes of shouts coming from Hangar 34 and 35 where the other two classes of senior students are also having their final examination. The stars blink through the stained glass of the porthole and the bio-barriers of the station, distant and distorted. They remind Junhui of the stickers Wonwoo has slowly glued to all the walls of their room, one for every real star he’s found in the last three years. Junhui counts them at night when he can’t fall asleep just like he’s counting the ones in front of him as he waits for the instructor to call his name for the flight test.

Unseen, Kwon Soonyoung slips quietly behind Junhui, startling him with a cheerful, “Are you nervous?” Junhui freezes and loses the count, his shoulder tensing immediately and his elbow finding Soonyoung’s stomach easily. “Hey, come on, it’s just me,” pleads Soonyoung, half-laughing and half-wincing. He massages his side where Junhui has hit him and sends a dashing smile towards the assistant of their flying instructor who’s eyeing them both warily. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so nervous, Wen Junhui.”

Junhui wants to bite back a sarcastic comment, but his voice is stuck inside his throat together with a lump of bile and fear. He doesn’t answer, but he allows Soonyoung to push him down and help him stretch to relieve the tension and avoid any muscular pains inside the cramped cockpit of the starfighter.  
“You know, I used to think nothing would ever beat the panic I felt before my first flight.” Junhui nods. It was more than two years ago, but he still remembers the butterflies in his stomach, the cold shivers, the sound of his heart echoing in his ribcage louder than a gong in an empty hall, like it was yesterday. None of that can be compared to how he’s feeling now.   
“It seems so easy compared to this. We just had to go out and do our best and even if we made a mistake we knew there would’ve been other chances.”

After a first flight you still have two years worth of other chances, but this is the last flight and there will be no other chances for Wen Junhui if he misses this one. If he fails, he’ll graduate without honors and he’ll be enlisted in the security team of one of the space stations scattered across the universe. He’ll never fly again. 

If he succeeds... He’ll graduate with honors and he’ll be admitted into the Special School for Reserve Officer’s Training in spaceship Soul-006 as a fighter pilot.

Soonyoung pats his back. “You’re the second best student in this class, Wen Junhui. The only way you can lose your spot in the Special School is to crash your starfighter against an asteroid like a loser.”

“You’re always so comforting. Do you need help stretching too?”

Soonyoung nods and they switch. Around them, the other students have started to stretch too, waiting for the third class to finish their exam so they can start.

“We’re the last ones this time. Do you remember last year? We were in the first batch back then.”

They were in the first batch and they flew together. Junhui had been Soonyoung’s co-pilot for the first mission and they had switched for the second. Perfect grade, for both of them. He had let Soonyoung kiss him in his room before the last class had finished with their exam and had broken up immediately after that, after not even two months of study dates and kisses stolen in the corridor behind the flight simulator.

“Last year we were also together,” he says, and he’s not sure he’s talking about the exam or the dates or the breakup or something else entirely.

Soonyoung smiles and his eyes narrow in the friendliest way as he gets up and pats Junhui’s shoulder. 

“We’re still together. You’re going to slay this exam and I’m going to do the same we’re both going to be selected for the Special Corps. We’re the only ones left, you know? Jihoon received his admission letter this morning.”

“Well, Wonwoo knew since last month.”

They stop for a moment to pay attention as the first three students on the list get inside their starfighter. Junhui has memorized the list and he knows his name will be called once Lim Changkyun comes back. Still five minutes. Five fucking minutes and Junhui nods and tries to look cool because, scared or not, he’s still the second best student of this class and everyone is looking at him to see whether the pressure will make him crumble or polish him.

“Still nervous?” asks Soonyoung.

“Aren’t you?” shoots back Junhui, feeling strangely irritated by Soonyoung’s lack of performance anxiety. 

Soonyoung laughs. “I’m probably more nervous than you, but my name is one of the last on that list. It’s too early to be panicking for me.”

Junhui doubts someone can be more nervous than him at the moment. He feels stretched too wide into a too small body, filled to his breaking point with emotions and senses going into overdrive. This is a performance anxiety thing but not only a performance anxiety thing. It’s a discomfort that grew roots in his lungs a few weeks ago and has festered since then, getting stronger and heavier whenever Junhui thinks that Wonwoo has already been chosen for the Special Corps when he still doesn’t know if he’ll make the selection.

The thought of failing this exam and never seeing his best friend again is unsettling enough, but when Junhui stops and really takes a moment to realize _that he’s freaking out over Wonwoo_ he feels even worse. He had stopped fooling around with Soonyoung because he didn’t want to feel too attached, but Wonwoo... Wonwoo is different. He’s just the person who has shared Junhui’s entire life for the past three years. Sometimes Junhui struggles to remember how his life was before Jeon Wonwoo.

“BAT-5 calls Wen Junhui, are you listening?”

Junhui shushes him. He’s in the middle of freaking out. No one can interrupt him.

“If you’re so nervous about this maybe you should think about something even scarier. Like, I don’t know, telling Wonwoo how you feel about him.”

Junhui tries to pretend he didn’t hear that but it’s difficult to pretend when you feel like you’re choking and suddenly all the blood in your body rushes to your face and you can’t stop blinking like an idiot.

“You know everyone knows, right?”

“Soonyoung...” he warns, low and desperate and lost.

“Think that, if you pass, you’ll have to tell him.”

Junhui’s nostrils flare. “That is not gonna help me. At all.”

Soonyoung laughs at the bottom line of a joke Junhui doesn’t understand and whispers _good luck_ when the assistant calls Junhui’s name.

~

Junhui spins and burns through the corridors of the dormitories, leaving a trail of excitement behind himself. He doesn’t know what kind of gravity is pulling him towards his best friend but he feels like he’s falling and he feels like he’s burning, and if he doesn’t get to his room soon and tell Wonwoo he’ll be consumed by the feeling and there will be nothing left of him in the wake of it.

He doesn’t know what he wants to say yet. Something along the lines of _I passed my exam_ and _we’ll be together next year_ first. But he also wants to tell Wonwoo about the burning asteroid he saw during his exam, _can you believe it? I’ve flown next to a shooting star_ and listen as Wonwoo asks him what’s the difference between an asteroid and a shooting star so that he can tell him. And then he’ll tell him the difference between a star and the sun, and then he’ll tell him he loves him, probably, if he can find the right words.

He slams the door open, follows the trail of glowing stars, constellations on the walls of his room and on the walls of his mind, and stops. There’s a suitcase spread open in the middle of Wonwoo’s bed, surrounded by a mess of clothes. Inside the suitcase, only a single book reader, Wonwoo’s telescope and the wrist computer he uses to create four dimensional intergalactic maps. The smile freezes on Junhui’s face. Something stays there, like a parody of it, but the expression that welcomes Wonwoo when he appears from behind the closet carrying a pair of shoes in each hand is not a true smile.

“Oh, you’re here, how did it go?” he asks, at the same time Junhui blurts out, “Are you leaving?”

Wonwoo has the decency to look guilty and Junhui thinks he should be angry - this, this is not a last minute decision, Wonwoo has known this for quite long and he didn’t tell Junhui. They’re friends, aren’t they? They’re roommates, binary stars, whatever the fuck they are, but what is that if Wonwoo doesn’t tell him something this important-

“I did want to tell you, I swear,” says Wonwoo, looking guilty and so fucking small, and Junhui wants to be angry with him but staying angry with Wonwoo is impossible. “But you’re really sensitive about stuff like this and you had your last flying test today and I didn’t want you to give you unnecessary thoughts.”

There’s nothing Junhui can answer to that. Wonwoo probably did the right thing, but that doesn’t stop Junhui’s inner walls from crumbling and collapsing all over him. He doesn’t stop his words from curling and crumpling and burning when he realizes he’s already reached the atmosphere and soon enough the friction will consume everything that’s left of him.

“It’s only for a few months,” continues Wonwoo, in a feeble attempt to make things better. “I was offered an internship in a spaceship leaving for the system of Áine-Grain in two days.” Two days? Only two days? “I’ll come back in time with the beginning of classes on Soul-006,” he says, “And we’ll see each other in less than a semester.”

Junhui absorbs the blow in silence and lets it settle inside his stomach, to fuel the ugly thing that’s growing there. Wonwoo’s bottom lip shakes for a moment. “I’ll come back, Junhui.”

Junhui shakes his head so violently he feels dizzy, digs his nails in the inside of his palms deep enough to draw blood and pulls at his lips to shape them into a tentative smile. The truth is he has no right to feel angry and betrayed and abandoned, he should feel happy and congratulate Wonwoo and...

“This is for you,” says Wonwoo, taking a little box out of his closet. “I actually wanted to wait until graduation, but I won’t be here anymore so I’m giving it to you now. I know you’re angry but... Congratulations on passing your final examination with flying colors, Wen Junhui.”

“No, I mean, you...” The right words won’t come and Junhui can only close his mouth before he starts looking like a fish. “I mean, congratulations, to you too, thank you- What is this?”

He shakes the package lightly, afraid to break something. Wonwoo stares him expectantly as he opens it, but he can’t help the excited rambling that leaves his lips as soon as the hinge clicks.

“It’s a nano-machine cheat I got through a friend of Jihoon. If you stick it to your ID-com, you’ll be able to contact me even if I’m at the edge of the universe. How cool is that?”

But Junhui is not looking at the electronic gadget in the box, not bigger than a pinhead. Inside the box there’s also Wonwoo’s dog tag. It clinks when Junhui picks it up.

Wonwoo’s eyes are wary, hesitant. “If you keep it, I will have to come back for sure, to retrieve it from you.”

“Can I, really?”

Wonwoo nods, quick and nervous, and Junhui doesn’t know if he’s supposed to say something, offer his own back, _what does this even mean?_

He stares at it and then back at Wonwoo. There are so many thing he wanted to say, he had even prepared a little speech, but when his mouth open he can only blurt, “How did you know I would pass?”

“I’ve always known.”

The storm is over, Junhui’s chance to confess his feelings has burnt and faded away but Wonwoo smiles and for a moment Junhui doesn’t need words. He has sighs and bitten lips and long, languid gazes. Sometimes it’s not enough but sometimes it is. It’s always been enough for Wonwoo.

They’re seventeen years old and their first kiss is extremely awkward, and messy, and short. There’s a moment of hesitation when they look at each other with something akin to panic and mute questions flickering in their eyes - _how are we doing this do I lean towards you do you come towards me do we angle our heads are we really doing this_ \- until they somehow meet halfway, bumping their noses and almost missing each other’s lips. Wonwoo doesn’t know what to do at all. Junhui should know, he’s had enough experience and he’s also liked Wonwoo long enough to have fantasized about this for months, but somehow he finds himself at a loss of what to do.

Kissing Wonwoo is like discovering a secret world inside your closet. You’ve had that closet for years, you thought you knew it like the back of your hand, but you’re still a stranger there and you don’t know where to go or what do to do so you just stay there, arms hanging awkwardly at your sides, feeling both hyper-aware of your breath, your chapped lips, your sweaty hands, your messy heartbeat and the horrible sound your throat makes when your lips touch his.

Junhui tries to move away, startled by his own moan, but Wonwoo has not changed, he’s still oddly persistent. He’s still stubborn and he’s still better at solving riddles then Junhui is. He’s still Wonwoo and he has stars in his eyes and on the tip of his tongue and at the corner of his lips and Junhui knows his face better than he knows his own but it still feels different under his lips, foreign and dangerous and powerful.

He looks at him for a moment, to make sure he’s still Wonwoo, Junhui’s Wonwoo, whatever that means, before he kisses him again.

Their second kiss is a little better, but still awkward. Their lips refuse to fit together and Junhui’s arms feel too heavy on Wonwoo’s shoulders or around his hips so they just lie stiffly on his forearms and the kiss is too dry and, again, too short.

“I’m usually better than this,” blurts Junhui when Wonwoo lets him go to stare at him like he stares at contradictory data and black holes. Junhui kisses him again, just to prove a point, and he doesn’t even know what he’s doing but this time when they separate Wonwoo’s eyes are glossy and they follow Junhui’s lips so maybe he really did something right this time.

Junhui still hopes for another kiss, but Wonwoo inhales, slowly, and says, “I’m leaving tomorrow.” He exhales. “I was hoping that you would... wait for me. I mean, when I come back. We can do this again,” Wonwoo says, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy for Junhui who doesn’t have the words but it’s not easy for Wonwoo, who has only words to talk astrophysics and riddles, either.

“Yes”, Junhui just says, breathless, and he didn’t know he still had it in him. He thought his fire had died out, but it’s still burning, it’s still burning. “Yes I will wait for you. It’s not like I have a choice, you know? I was running here to tell you... To ask you, to be my boyfriend.”

And Wonwoo lights up, and he’s bright and warm and perfect, and maybe Junhui has gotten everything wrong. Maybe he’s not a shooting star, maybe he is a planet, trapped in an elliptic dance around the sun. If the sun is Wonwoo, maybe he doesn’t even mind. That way, he can really chase him forever.

~

**v. nebula**

_Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better._

_— Maya Angelou_

 

For many people, the universe is an abstract concept, a detailed 4D model, a confused impression of stars and planets and floating rocks and loneliness. For many people, universe is just a word, eight letters to contain everything that there is, has ever been and will ever be.

For Wonwoo, the universe is a challenge. He sees the world around him in numbers and light, a mystery to be solved, a treasure to be found. The map is right here, all around us, and you can find the way if you connect the dots. Some nights, Wonwoo pulls Junhui inside his room and draws the universe around him in soft holographic strokes, shows him how it stretches, how it expands, how it becomes a bigger, colder place everyday. He asks questions about the end of the universe and how black holes are pulling it back, pull and stretch, stretch and pull, and who knows what’s on the other side of black holes anyway? Junhui doesn’t need the answers to these questions, but he’ll listen to Wonwoo’s voice for hours, until the last night bell has rung and it’s too late to go back to his own room. So he just stays and waits for Wonwoo’s head to start lolling on his shoulder as his voice drifts and wavers. He turns the projector off and takes Wonwoo’s glasses and convinces him to go to bed and he falls asleep to Wonwoo’s soft snores. In the morning, he wakes up first, goes to the hangar and flies away. 

Wonwoo sees the world in numbers and light, but Junhui sees the world in colors, bright and beautiful, exploding in front of his eyes and testing the limits of the spectrum, testing the limits of Junhui’s eyes. Wonwoo might be the one who knows the route, but Junhui is the one who walks it with easy steps.

~

The Soul-006 is not a space station. It’s a war spaceship, the fourth bigger of the Federal Fleet, and it can host an entire army. For now, it only hosts the Special School for Reserve Officers. There’s more than enough space so everyone gets rooms, single rooms. Wonhui’s and Junhui’s rooms are in different quarters on the opposite sides of the spaceship, as distant as they could ever be, but it never really stops them. Wonwoo’s trip on the other side of the universe didn’t stop them and the distance between the Eastern wing of the Fourth Deck and the Western wing of the Second Deck is insignificant in front of the beauty of Wonwoo’s smile when he raises his head to find Junhui opening his door and letting himself in. (Distance is a relative thing. For Junhui, it doesn’t matter if Wonwoo is all the way across the universe or all the way across the ship because he misses him as much when he’s not with him.)

~

The war continues. They say they’re losing and they say they could all be called to fight any moment now. Wonwoo frowns and Junhui sees quiet, dark panic swirl in his eyes - not for himself, because Wonwoo as a navigator is bound to stay on one of the commander ships anyway. Wonwoo panics every time he hears one of the older pilots praising Junhui’s abilities after a mission, and panics every time one of the captains greet Junhui on the corridors, and he panics every time someone mentions a lack of talented pilots at a front line that, according to the news coming from the battlefield, moves back every day in favor of the enemy. He panics because he doesn’t know when Wen Junhui will disappear right under his eyes.

~

Junhui tries not to think about the war. When he’ll be older and just about to die in deep space, cold and alone, he’ll think about the three years he spent in the Special Corps Academy. He won’t think about the shadow of war looming over his head. He’ll think about Soonyoung’s easy laughter and all the times he forgot his ID-com inside his starfighter and his greasy flirting with the girls of the cryptography team.

He’ll think about that time he and Soonyoung caught Jihoon on a romantic date with Captain Amy Lee of the ES-311, the Evening Sky, one of the biggest spaceships of the Federal fleet, he’ll remembers Wonwoo’s quiet laugh and his surprised, “Are you telling me you didn’t know?” 

He’ll think about Mingyu, who followed Wonwoo around like a lost kid for three weeks after his transfer to the Soul-6, about Minghao, who raced Junhui and bragged about becoming the best starfighter pilot of the universe, and about Lee Seokmin who became Soonyoung’s co-pilot and kept the position for the rest of the war.

He’ll think about the captain of his squadron, Choi Seungcheol, inviting all the pilots out for drinks and getting drunk first, telling them all how proud of them he is and how he hopes their team will never be called to war but if they are, “If we are,” he says between hiccups, cheeks red and eyes shining, “I know we’ll make the difference.”

Junhui will think about Wonwoo and that time he broke at least twenty-seven federal rules just to take him to the roof of the world on his starfighter for his nineteenth birthday. They were both almost expelled for that stunt. Wonwoo got three months of suspension and Junhui was banned from flying for six months. It was a high price to pay for a night of fun, but Junhui is sure he’ll never forget that night. Most of his memories of this period will be hazy and confused, but he’ll remember the way Wonwoo’s hands stuck to the panel of the window with painful clarity. He’ll remember his eyes, opened so wide he could fit the reflection of all the stars of the universe in them. He’ll remember the taste of his mouth that night, the words Wonwoo whispered against his neck. “One day, I want to watch a supernova exploding with you.”

~

**vi. supernova**

_There is something  
beautiful coming,  
even if it’s only the sun.”  
— Ashe Vernon_

Wonwoo draws constellations on Junhui’s skin with his fingers and with his mouth first and then with his nails and with his teeth. He maps Junhui’s moans, one by one, calls Junhui his universe. Junhui chases and chases and chases until, for a moment, Wonwoo becomes everything, the sun and the sky, the limit and what lies beyond the limit. Every single star can be the sun if Junhui has Wonwoo.

~

**vii. red hypergiant**

_The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale for the amateur astronomer._

_The darker the skies, the brighter the entire universe._

_**CLASS 1: Unequivocally dark skies.** _

_You touch the darkness the same way you taste it against your teeth. You see nothing._

_And it is in this nothingness,_

_You see absolutely everything._

_— nikka ursula (n.t.)_

When Junhui is twenty-six, the sky eats him whole. It takes only a moment, the whim of a fickle, capricious star during a mission, all the instrument going haywire while the battle rages and storms and enemy fire mixes with the explosions of the stellar flare. Or maybe it started way before that, it started with the opening of the hangar, with flashing lights and warning sirens.

Junhui leaves the battleship in his starfighter and it doesn’t feel like he’s going out. It feels like he’s going in, like being swallowed and digested and broken down in tiny little pieces, like he’s in the stomach of a giant monster, like the universe always makes him feel.

The co-pilot, a young little thing called Lee Chan, best grades of his year, chatty and nervous at his first experience in the real war, checks the shields, checks the instruments. “We’re ready to go,” he says.

So they go, in the middle of the battle. For others, for heavy battleships and star cruisers, it could be the final battle of a long war. For this small squadron of starfighters though it’s just a support mission. They only have to cover the retreat of one of their biggest assault spaceships. Junhui has already done it thousand times. Avoid the enemy fire, shoot back as much as you can, spin, twist, listen to the radio, tell Lee Chan to be careful of not overheating the laser guns.

He tries not to rush it, he tries to stay calm and not let anxiety gnaws at him, but he can’t help the bad feeling crawling down his chest, inside his lungs, curling inside his stomach like a poisonous snake in its nest. He tries not to think about Wonwoo and how much he had begged Junhui not to leave, not this time.

“The instruments don’t lie, Junhui. Tlaloc’s surface is not stable, it could explode any moment now.” _Don’t be a hero. Heroes die._

Junhui is not a hero. He’s not a giant. He can’t chase the sun, he can’t catch it. Junhui fights because when he was twelve years old his home exploded. Everyone loses something in war, Junhui almost lost himself. He found himself again, in the corridors of the Academy, in the cockpit of a starfighter, in the calm noise of a hangar during an emergency and in the deafening silence of the void during an armed recon. In Wonwoo’s arms. But he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to find a place called home, to find a star to call his sun until this war is over. Junhui is no hero, but he’s a soldier. And soldiers fight.

So he speeds up, takes down three enemies, listens to the confused orders on their radio channel. “Giant-4, move operations 15 space miles to the southeast. You have an AY-17 transmitting from the north, correction southeast to the northwest,” croaks the radio, before a loud, deafening, long beep interrupts it and the whole console shakes.

The flare begins with this, a malfunction of all the instruments. Junhui ignores Chan’s confused questions for a moment. Even if the instruments aren’t working there’s still a chance to get out of this alive if he can pilot manually. Then the surface of Tlaloc explodes, the noise reaching the middle of the battle only a few seconds before the star ejects a column of heat, electrons, ions, and atoms into space.

They lose control, for a moment. The starfighter spins, crashes against an enemy recog ship and Chan goes down with a soft groan.

Tlaloc takes a deep breath and for a moment, everything is still. Junhui knows what’s coming. Then, the star explodes again and the sky closes in on Junhui.

~

Junhui opens his eyes and stares at the little flashing light on the console. Yellow, yellow, yellow, he counts the beats until it turns red and only then allows himself a smile. A synthetic, melodious female voice announces that the level of oxygen is now less than fifteen percent and that a strategic retreat towards the mother ship is strongly advised.

“Yes, sure, give me a new engine and it’s the first thing I’ll do, Qian jiějiě.”

The AI interface that Soonyoung and Seokmin reprogrammed to sound like a famous pop idol from the Tlaloc system bips, confused.

“The engines have suffered from a critical damage.”

Junhui blinks, unfazed. His starfighter bumps lightly against the fragment of an asteroid and he hears the thud of his copilot’s head against the walls of the cockpit. Poor Lee Chan, smiley, stubborn Lee Chan, smelling of Academy and hopeful dreams, who volunteered to be part of a suicide mission. The boy is still breathing. He hit is head, hard, when an enemy MST-X scout crashed against Junhui’s MS-17’s left engine during the solar flare. He’s been unconscious since then, but judging from how quickly the oxygen level is dropping, he won’t be alive for long. None of them will.

Dying like this, surrounded by the most beautiful view in the universe, is not so bad

Junhui holds the dog tag at his neck like an amulet, feels the numbers and letters under his fingers. He knows them by heart, they’re his secret password for everything, from the subscription to Song Qian’s official fanclub to his bank account code, but they’re not his numbers. They’re Wonwoo’s.

What will they say to him? Will they tell him Junhui has died in battle? Or will they tell him he was right? Wonwoo had predicted the stellar storm, he had asked Commander Jung to postpone the attack. He had asked Junhui to stay at the base this time.

“Did you know, Wonwoo? I chased the sun for so long. And I caught it this time, right into my face. And he won. I don’t think I’ll survive this time.”

The red light keeps flashing, like one of Song Qian’s pop songs. Junhui murmurs the lyrics to himself. _It’s turned on, red light, the vivid, red light, it gets bigger by itself. That red light._

He had promised Wonwoo he’d come back, but what’s a promise made by a man to a man in front of the universe? Nothing. The universe doesn’t listen. It’s dead and cold. _Did you know? The universe is alive,_ says Wonwoo’s voice in Junhui’s memories.

He closes his eyes. He’s so tired. He wants to give up. But Wen Junhui is not a man who gives up. When he was a kid he wanted to become a giant who will one day catch the sun and now look at him, he did it, didn’t he?

“Qian?” he calls, hanging onto the last hope. “Is our communication system still working?”

“No, Captain. It’s irreparably damaged.”

“Of course it is. Tell me something I don’t know. Is there something that has not been critically damaged?”

He waits, because he has all the time in the universe, until the AI completes the analysis.

“The iota waves amplifier has not suffered from any major damage.”

Iota waves? Who looks for iota waves anyway? Sending a iota waves SOS is like putting the message in a bottle and leave it to float adrift. It’s like believing in miracles, in last minute happy endings, in heroes and angels. Junhui bites his lips and takes a long, deep breath, hoping it won’t be one of his last.

“Send an SOS message.”

If there’s a chance, Wonwoo will hear it. Wonwoo will find him.

~

Junhui is barely conscious when the recog ship finds them. He’s not conscious when they bring him back to the flagship and he’s still unconscious when the battle is won. He wakes up a few hours before the first peace treaties talks, but he doesn’t know anything until the first ceasefire between the Solar System Empire and the Intergalactic Federation is signed.

“Wonwoo wouldn’t let us tell you anything,” confesses Jihoon during a visit. “You should’ve seen him, he was so angry. He fought with the Admiral because he ordered the attack even if the possibilities of a stellar flare were quite high and when you stopped answering he went crazy.”

Junhui cranes his neck to stare at Wonwoo, who’s sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed and looking both angry and vulnerable, both sharp and soft, like he always is.

“That must have been quite a sight,” he murmurs, and Wonwoo’s eyes flash in rage again.

“One we all hope to never see again,” whispers Soonyoung.

“What about the kid? Lee Chan?” he asks. 

It’s Jihoon who answers this time. “They dismissed him yesterday. He wanted to visit you, I think, but we’re already stretching the rules by being three here when you’re supposed to still be in isolation.”

“Your brother called, by the way. He was very relieved to know you survived.”

“Mom must’ve been worried,” he whispers. The sky took Junhui away from her, and not the war. A stellar flare, not an enemy attack. And the sky gave him back. “I was told you and Seokmin found us.”

Soonyoung nods. “We received the order to open all our communication channels or else we wouldn’t have detected your SOS. You were really lucky though, we were done searching that quadrant and we almost missed you.”

“Guess it wasn’t my time yet. I have another destiny, my friends.”

Wonwoo scoffs and Jihoon and Soonyoung choose that moment to exchange a quick look and leave.

“So, destiny, mh?”

He’s angry, so angry. Not the explosive, hot anger of supernovas but the consuming, dark grudge of black holes, as if he wants to swallow Junhui whole rather than watching him leave again.

“I’m sorry. You told me not to go.”

“And you did it anyway,” he says, hot and bitter with just a tiny edge of betrayed.

“This is the kind of person I am.”

“People can change, Junhui. We don’t shape our decisions, our decisions shape us. You could’ve stayed, you could’ve trusted me.”

“It was not about trust. I didn’t doubt your words for a moment. But if I hadn’t gone, someone would’ve gone in my place and maybe that someone would’ve died. I didn’t.”

And there’s nothing else Junhui can say. He doesn’t want to be the kind of man who gives up. If he can be anything he wants, he wants to be a giant and he wants to be a hero and Wonwoo was the one who taught him he could make himself into anything he wanted. He taught him he could make his own destiny.

“Destiny doesn’t exist, Junhui. You were just lucky.”

Wonwoo doesn’t believe in destiny. He believes in numbers. He believes in rules and laws and corollaries because that’s what he knows best. To be prepared, to research. The world has no secrets if you know how to read it. Junhui doesn’t know how to read it but he believes in Wonwoo. He believes in heroes, even if he’s not one, not really. He believes in angels, miracles and in happy endings, he believes in destiny. He believes the sun can be caught. The sky is vast. It’s wild and impossible and out of control and the fact that he managed to find Wonwoo in such a big world, that Wonwoo managed to find him, shipwrecked and lost in the void, isn’t that a miracle? Isn’t that destiny? Junhui is still alive. Junhui still has faith.

“Maybe I was lucky, but I’m here now. I came back.”

“And you’re not going anywhere for a long, long time.”

“I will, but I’ll come back. I will always come back. I promise.”

They say the war is ending, or maybe it’s just taking a break. The universe can breathe and expand, slow, unhurried. Junhui can take Wonwoo’s hands, fill the space between his fingers with his own, kiss an apology on Wonwoo’s lips. He can make promises. They will be nothing in front of the universe, but they will mean something for them. Junhui will keep them.

_I am so grateful  
that the universe is vast and impossible  
and so wild that anything can happen;  
that the world is wide but  
just small enough  
that I found you  
amidst all of the madness. _

_— Ashe Vernon_

~

“Did you catch it in the end? The sun?”

“Oh, I did. I think I did. Countless times.”

“So, what is it?”

“What?”

“The sun, Junhui! You said you’d tell me when you’d catch it. What is the sun?”

Wen Junhui smiles. Wonwoo has always liked answers more than questions.n“Why don’t you tell me instead of laughing?”

There are many stars in Wonwoo’s eyes. Junhui can see his own sun among them.

“What is the sun, you ask? It’s easy, Wonwoo. The sun is tomorrow.”

 

_you think you’ve seen every ugly corner  
of this whole rotten world, but listen:  
there are an infinite number  
of things we don’t know and,  
statistically speaking,  
at least half of them  
are probably  
very, very beautiful._

_— Ashe Vernon ___

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest thank you to everyone who helped me with this fic, my beta reader and the prompter. I really hope you liked it.  
> The amount of research that needs to be done for a space/sci fi verse is titanic, and what I did didn’t even come close to what I should’ve done and what I wanted to do. There was no time to properly build this verse and double check and triple check if what I was writing was scientifically plausible or not, so I apologise for the many inaccuracies.
> 
> Also, if you’re curious about the poetry I used as quotes, [this](http://houseangelos.co.vu/) is Nikka Ursula’s tumblr and [this](http://latenightcornerstore.com/) is Ashe Vernon’s tumblr, [this](http://livtorc.moonfruit.com/) is Liv Torc’s website and [this](https://twitter.com/NightValeRadio) is the Night Vale podcast Twitter account. Finn Butler deleted all her tumblr posts [here](http://greatestreality.tumblr.com/), but you can easily purchase her book online if you’re interested.


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